A.
Three Systemic Monopoly situations in the global
economy are identified and alternatives
explored:-
-
The Bankers Monopoly over the Creation of
Money.
-
The Land and Natural Resource Ownership
Monopoly.
-
The Control over Labour Monopoly.
B. The Bankers Monopoly, in which money is
created as interest bearing Debt, has inbuilt
features that require perpetual growth:
impossible in a finite world. True
sustainability will never be attained while this
continues.
This system promotes competition and
greed and systematically transfers wealth to a
very small minority of the world’s population.
True equality and dignity can never be attained
whilst this endures.
C. The Vision
explores the concept of Community Capitalism
and how it could be instituted to counter
the Bankers monopoly.
-
Money would be created as value rather than
as debt and brought into circulation through
a National Mutual Trust Fund (NMF) a
semi private investment corporation.
-
The NMF would concentrate its investments in
areas of long term productivity growth.
-
All citizens would be shareholders in the
NMF from which a basic citizens’ income
would be paid to all adults.
-
the NMF would be granted the necessary
investment capital, interest free,
from the central bank of the nation on an
annual basis authorized by an act of
parliament.
-
The NMF would thus make every citizen a
capitalist interested in the efficient and
effective use of capital.
D. The land
ownership monopoly is addressed in the vision by
instituting a system of Land Value Rental
Collection.
-
The payment of this rental will give
stewardship rights to those best able to
utilise land and natural resources in the
interest of all citizens.
-
Those excluded from direct use of land and
resources will be reimbursed by way of a
citizens’ income.
-
All citizens will thus indirectly become
landowners thus upholding the constitutional
right to equality.
-
Parts of an open letter to Mikhail Gorbachov,
from thirty American Professors of
Economics, in support of this method of
collecting government revenue by charging
market rents for the use of land, are quoted
in the document.
E. The payment of
a citizens’ income, based on dividends
from the NMF and the collection of land value
rental, will provide a flexible tool to counter inflation thereby keeping the
value of money constant.
F. People across
the world have been dispossessed of their land;
their living environments have been despoiled
and their resources plundered. Thus a Labour
Monopoly resting firmly on the Bank
Monopoly, which in turn rests on the Land and
Natural Resource Monopoly exists in most parts
of the world today.
-
For the majority there is very little true
economic freedom and almost no equity.
-
The Rights of Dignity, Equality and
Freedom espoused in the Constitution of
the Republic of South Africa have been
seriously violated.
-
Our present economy, rather than being
called a capitalist, free-market system,
could be characterised as a Servitude
System.
-
The vision shows how the element of
servitude can be replaced by a supportive
service system of equal opportunity and
optimum freedom based on the principles and
philosophy of Ubuntu.
G. To incorporate
Ubuntu into Societal Institutions
requires a deep seated Transformation of
Banking that takes into account four
elements from which the Money Power of
banks, and the banking elite, is derived.
-
In essence it is Trust and Faith in
the future productive power of
individuals, companies and the institutions
of society that enables banks to create
money.
-
Six reform principles for balancing power,
and converting banks into true servers of
all citizens, are elaborated on in the
vision.
-
A top priority for the immediate future is
to foster a widespread interest amongst the
public in the way our financial system
actually works and then to harness this
Money Power for the good of all
humanity.
H. Stability
Indicators for determining the wellbeing of
different fields and functions within society
would need to be developed to ensure that for
instance: the general cost of living remains
stable; the price of common consumer goods stays
constant and that the health of communities and
ecosystems is being maintained. Thus the
wellbeing of the population at large and the
environment will be nourished and supported by a
Living Steady State Economy.
I. In a steady
state economic system money should be created
and destroyed in direct proportion to the
production and consumption of wealth.
-
A number of innovative ways of doing this
are explored in the vision.
-
Though constitutional changes might be
required to bring about many of the reforms
suggested modifications to the Act of
Parliament governing the procedures of the
Central Bank could be sufficient to begin
movement in the right direction.
J. An interim
list of 12 Practical Steps that can be
taken towards implementing elements of the
vision has been drawn up.
K. Existing and
future projects that incorporate aspects
of the vision are being identified and a
preliminary list is included in the document
Building the Future.
ING
THE
FUTURE
is a
beginning
of the
process
of
developing
an
integrated
Transition
Towns
Vision
for the
future
(particularly
in South
Africa).